Introducing Tony Cordato, Lawyer

Tony Cordato is the principal at Cordato Partners, Lawyers (Sydney Australia), a company that provides a wide range of legal advice to business clients, property clients, and travel, tourism and hospitality clients based up an understanding of the workings of these industries.

VC or Bust caught up with Tony for a brief interview:

VC or Bust: Tony Cordato, welcome to VC or Bust. Tell us a little about your background.

AJC: I am a Sydney (Australia) CBD based lawyer, with a passion for business, property and tourism law.

VC or Bust: You are the principal of Cordato Partners, Lawyers, tell us about the services you offer.

AJC: We act for property investors, business owners and tourism operators. We assist in transactional work, advisory work and dispute resolution / litigation.

VC or Bust: How does Cordato Partners differ from other firms?

AJC: We love to take on difficult assignments and solving problems with creative but legally sound strategies. Being a boutique firm we are nimble and swift and cost effective!

VC or Bust: In the past, you and I have had long discussions about various property transactions. As long as I have known you, you have been an advocate of “seller financing”. Could you fill us in on what seller financing is?

AJC: Seller Finance is also known as vendor finance. Seller finance ‘greases the wheels’ of property and business sales, by providing a solution where a Bank or other financier is unable to provide the funds to the buyer to pay the seller the price the seller requires.

VC or Bust: Could you expand a little on seller finance, and tell us about the different techniques and which scenarios they would be used?

AJC: There are three main seller finance techniques that can be used.

1. The first is to wrap around an existing loan a new loan to the purchaser, which is documented as an Instalment Contract (also known as a Terms Contract or Wrap Contract).
2. The second is to give the purchaser the opportunity to ‘look and see’ by allowing them into the property at an above market rent and then crediting the above market part of the rent towards the price, which is documented as a lease with an option (this is a rent to own or rent to buy technique).
3. The third is to sell with some carry back finance, documented by a loan agreement or mortgage (this is often a second mortgage carry-back).

VC or Bust: How Can Cordato Partners assist investors with either Vendor Financing Transactions or Seller Financing?

AJC: We prepare the documents for the seller financing techniques. We are the premier legal firm in that field in Australia, assisting in hundreds of vendor finance transactions each year. We tie in with the Vendor Finance Association and with Rick Otton’s No Money Down Bootcamps.

VC or Bust: Tony, thank you for your time. We’ll keep an eye out for your future posts on VC or Bust.

To follow Tony’s posts or to find out more about Cordato Partners, Lawyers, follow this link.